I love cities. They afford a lifestyle that no amount of stunning sunsets and milking cows can replace. Although I do feel that the people who live in the city are yearning for the wide open spaces and country folk want to shop at Burberry.
I digress.
Years ago studying art history, our teacher exhorted us to look up: to always look UP. The only people who look up are twitchers and air traffic controllers, and it is amazing what you can see and absorb through looking up. Clouds, building details, hidden windows, a tree branch growing towards the artificial streetlights, reflections of landscape framed and delineated through the edges of concrete, glass and brick.
I grew up in an extremely flat city. After being given this advice, my understanding of the civic growth and development of the city expanded incrementally, simply by looking above my head. I saw old advertisements and webs of wires, pot-plants on ledges and a life above eye level
When I say look up, I don't just mean to the top floor, I also mean above the doorway or simply the ceiling above your head. This came clearest into focus when studying a leadlight frame for a jewellery shop in the town I grew up in. Above the front door, behind the entrance sign, was the most amazing leadlight that told the story of the settlers in the city. I had never seen it before. It was a joy and was celebration of the lead-lighters craft.
I know that when are somewhere new or in the countryside, we are in a constant state of looking up-ness; but its the streets that are the back of your hand, the park at the end of your street, the high street you know so well because you shop there every day, that shows us the quietest pleasures of looking up.
FURTHER READING:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/look+up+to
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Looking-Sideways-Alan-Fletcher/dp/0714834491
No comments:
Post a Comment